


smile like nothing's wrong

by TheTartWitch



Series: One-shots of AUs [12]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book Three: Prisoner of Azkaban, Draco needs to learn when to NOT SPEAK UP, Gen, Harry's bogart isn't a dementor, Harry's not as okay as he thinks, Hermione sort of guessed how bad Harry's home life actually is, Hurt No Comfort, Neville just needs more confidence, Not Evil!Severus, Sad, Severus teaches bogart day instead of Lupin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:55:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8688553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: Harry's bogart isn't Voldemort, or a Death Eater, or a Dementor.Sometimes, the things closest to our hearts are the things we overlook.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "I'm going to smile like nothing is wrong, talk like everything is perfect, act like it's all a dream, and pretend like it's not hurting me." -Unknown Author (to me at least)
> 
> My younger brother is reading the Harry Potter series for the first time and wanted to discuss the bogart scene, which sparked this.

Going into Professor Lupin’s classroom is like entering a battlefield that day: desks pushed into shadowy corners like the borders of far-away nations; a large, open area for carnage and mayhem to breed; a cabinet, shuddering and quaking one moment and submissively, hellishly still the next. He pushes back his shoulders in Defense in ways he’s only done in one other place. 

\--

_ Little Harry Potter, _

_ Friendless and alone,  _

_ Waiting for his bitter aunt _

_ To come and drag him home. _

 

_ He’s done a nasty deed again, _

_ Something truly dreadful, _

_ There’s nowhere left for them to send _

_ This boy so made of evil. _

\--

Professor Lupin’s out sick today, chased away from the classroom by a hacking cough and a nose that leaked ropes of snot. Professor Snape was standing in for him again, a fact that Ron bemoaned to no end.

They were going to be practicing on bogarts today, Professor Snape told them, his voice habitually soft. The spell was  _ Ridikulus _ , and you had to imagine the thing you feared becoming something ridiculous, which seemed simple enough until you actually stood before the thing you feared the most with nothing but your wand and your brain and your small, snarling bundle of courage stored deep inside you.

Neville’s bogart was Snape himself, and the man glared at his bogart for a few seconds before saying, “You are more competent than you believe, Longbottom, if only you would focus on it,” and Neville stared at the man he feared most before raising his wand and saying clearly, determinedly, “ _ Ridikulus _ !”

Bogart-Snape scowled, shuddered, and became a vividly lilac potion in a gently steaming cauldron: a perfectly-brewed Liquid Courage. Snape nodded acknowledgment and shooed the boy away.

\--

Harry knew what his bogart would be: Voldemort, or a Death Eater, or a Dementor, wailing that horrible scream and the woman begging for his life again. He stepped up to the cabinet imagining what he’d do for each: a pile of loose, drifting snake scales; a puppet on strings; a paper ghost, like the ones they hung in Muggle windows, or a music box. He wouldn’t be defeated by this, not after Quirrell and Tom Riddle and the basilisk and Uncle Vernon. 

His bogart wasn’t any of those things.

\--

He’d never thought about it before, not really.  _ What do I fear the most?  _ Seemed like a moot question to ask when his life was constantly in danger. Perhaps he hadn’t thought very deeply about it. He’d gone for the shallow fears, the here-and-now fears; death, dying, and being hurt. Those were things everyone feared, but nobody had  _ them  _ as a bogart. Ron’s bogart was an Acromantula, for kites’ sake! There must be some secret to a bogart, then, to dig past the mundane,  _ everybody _ fears and dig up something different from your neighbor but seemingly just as important as dying. 

In that moment, Harry wished his bogart had been his corpse, or Hermione’s, or Ron’s, or his mum’s. Anything but this revealing mockery.

\--

Snape’s mouth had thinned into a lipless line as he stared as Harry’s bogart. Any emotion he might have felt was padlocked behind that line, kept away from the eyes of children, but Harry wished, just once, that he was better at seeing past the defenses of others.

Neville’s mouth gaped. His eyes were pinched at the corners in a way that spoke of shock and sadness. Hermione was watching his bogart with quiet, upset eyes, and Ron seemed frozen in place.

Malfoy, standing in the back of the line with the other Slytherins, stepped out of line to point at the bogart with an accusing finger. He grinned with the cruelty only a thirteen-year-old speaking another thirteen-year-old might manage. “Is that a -?”

Snape flicked his wrist in the blonde’s direction, and the boy’s mouth snapped magically shut. Harry swallowed.

\--

His cupboard floated a foot off the ground in front of him. The walls were littered with small, hidden drawings in crayon of a boy, a man, and a woman all holding hands. A few of the them bore scratches from when Petunia had once discovered them and tried to scrape them from the wall, but they’d reappeared hours later, after she’d gone to sleep. The loose floorboard stuck up in a way it didn’t normally, his small threaded blanket peeking out. The door was swung open, but even from the inside you could see the eye-slot the Dursleys had installed to watch him at any hour of the day or night. And that was the most innocent of the markings on his cupboard.

In one corner and creeping up the wall was a bloodstain from Aunt Marge’s (and consequentially, Ripper’s) visit a few years before Hogwarts. Dust was showered on everything, reminiscent of Dudley’s love of stomping his way up and down the stairs. A pair of small masks hung from a peg on the back wall which he didn’t recognize. One was a smiling face, laughing joyously and never frowning, unblemished by Harry’s actual life. The second was a somber grey, eyes turned down to release small, painted blue teardrops that actually moved along the cheeks. It sobbed and wailed despairingly, and as he watched a bruise formed along one side of it, looking a bit like Aunt Petunia’s frying pan ( _ “fell out of a tree again, even though we warn him so much. If only he’d follow Dudley’s example,” _ ).

\--

After they’d moved him to Dudley’s old toy room, he still snuck down to the cupboard to sleep. It was too big a space upstairs, one he couldn’t get used to. He prefered the enclosed space where he could curl up and hide himself, where he could be anything he wanted so long as he didn’t make any noise or wake _ them _ up.

\--

Harry Potter stared into the abyss that was his childhood and felt it staring back, through the eyes of every other person in the room. 

He raised his wand and swallowed again.

“ _ Ridikulus _ ,” he said painfully, and his cupboard became a big-top circus advertising a freak show. It wasn’t much better than before, he thought.

\--

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to ask to see a certain event with canon divergence, or a character do something different instead of their canon actions. I can't promise it'll be long, but I do love writing divergent scenes and imagining how that change ripples outwards. :)  
> (no smut tho. I don't do smut on an emotional, mental, or physical level. just a heads-up. :)


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